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And we really, really hate it when that happens. If anyone out there has a sure fire method of predicting who the next Allahu Akbar-screaming jihadist...
July 31, 2016 at 05:32
I am confident that technical solutions exist or can be implemented, but the technical solution is only one part of the problem (as I see it). Produci...
July 31, 2016 at 05:19
Everyone, pretty much, who believes in anything is at least a little susceptible to satire (or worse, travesty) because beliefs are also blinders. Of ...
July 30, 2016 at 23:45
Wikipedia's biggest problem is maintaining what it has in good condition and regularly adding new high quality information. This depends on money, to ...
July 29, 2016 at 20:01
Comparing SEP to Wikipedia is like comparing the Joy of Cooking which covers everything from fried squirrel to lemon meringue with Thirty Nine Steps t...
July 29, 2016 at 19:54
In the Manifesto Marx said, "The executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie." That's a ...
July 29, 2016 at 05:59
Two books have influenced my thinking on the topic: The Better Angels of our Nature by Steven Pinker The Anatomy of Crime by Adrian Raine Pinker's boo...
July 28, 2016 at 23:03
As a matter of fact, there are quite a few people who live that way. Some observers have noted that a. where distrust of the central city/state author...
July 28, 2016 at 16:27
Anthropological studies of violent death seem to favor St. Augustine. In social groupings prior to the development of governments with actual power, t...
July 28, 2016 at 04:41
Explosives are inherently violent -- that's what explosives are for -- to produce a violent release of energy, to blow things up. Guns and bullets are...
July 28, 2016 at 04:29
The "meme" theory of politics, mass murder, etc. doesn't really explain anything, and it doesn't open any avenues towards the solution to what you or ...
July 27, 2016 at 19:10
I don't travel much though I have traveled within the US and in Canada, UK and East Africa. What I like in hotels is a fair degree of predictability a...
July 27, 2016 at 13:58
I was going to add a comment to your 9/11 thread; after I clicked "post Comment" I got a message "can't complete your request" or something to that ef...
July 26, 2016 at 21:08
In: Identity  — view comment
DNA, of course, maintains cellular continuity. Our neurons in the brain don't turn over, apparently, but some new ones can be added, and the connectio...
July 25, 2016 at 20:13
In: Intention  — view comment
I'm sorry, but I am not in a position to support Mars at this time. Maybe I could support a stapler, but we should have long since gone paperless, and...
July 24, 2016 at 05:25
All very good points. Sex (specifically, xx and xy) is not as precise as we might like. Sex evolved to achieve xx with xy mating. That's all it had to...
July 24, 2016 at 04:53
Well, of course autism now presents as a spectrum which makes them much more difficult to hit. That's raises another question: Why is a power company ...
July 24, 2016 at 02:16
If uber-liberals learned how to become more offensive, would they then be more legitimate? I would be happy to do an in-service for uber-liberals on h...
July 24, 2016 at 02:13
I think you are right: Some mass murderers are not motivated by any ideology at all, but are the result of rationally disordered thinking. The murder ...
July 23, 2016 at 23:06
Gender begins in Biology. Males produce sperm, women produce eggs and bear children. Women also lactate. Ever since mammals were invented (what, 65-75...
July 23, 2016 at 21:50
Whatever happened to Agustino? Needs not met, probably.
July 23, 2016 at 20:24
None of this is exculpatory, but it is important to remember that Europe hasn't been all sweetness and light since the death of Hitler in 1945. Let's ...
July 23, 2016 at 18:43
Yes, it's possible; a good life is attainable. A good life begins by affirming the possibility. Having affirmed the possibility, the next step is to g...
July 23, 2016 at 06:16
In: Identity  — view comment
That "our identity is made for us" is an observation of other people, particularly children. One sees the parents actively contributing to the child's...
July 22, 2016 at 17:25
In: Identity  — view comment
DNA sets the table. It doesn't program us, it gives us basic capacities, among which is the capacity to respond to experience. How well we can respond...
July 22, 2016 at 16:14
It's interesting... The British upper class and bourgeoisie in the 16th and 17th century loathed their poor people who were as white as they were (tho...
July 22, 2016 at 05:24
A spokesman for the advocacy group "Circle of Brotherhood" "Mr Muhammad, said "there was an "inherent fear of black men in this country that allows us...
July 22, 2016 at 00:46
In: Identity  — view comment
I take it that identity is the core of our psychological makeup, and I agree there are more basic operations then identity. The most basic component o...
July 21, 2016 at 23:57
President François Hollande has proved himself incompetent in one area -- hair. He's been spending $10,000 on his hair -- not in a lifetime, not in a ...
July 21, 2016 at 18:39
Plane crashes, whether they involve 300 or 3, tend to get press. Why, don't know. Media have been reporting small aircraft crashes involving 1, 2, or ...
July 21, 2016 at 15:09
The question isn't whether or how much the Trumpence campaign plagiarized Michele Obama's 2008 speech; it's Why would they bother? It's slovenly pract...
July 19, 2016 at 22:51
I didn't think the invasion of Iraq was a good idea -- ditto for the invasion of Kuwait, ditto for the war in Afghanistan, or Vietnam. It was bad poli...
July 19, 2016 at 20:38
What about the 5 Great Extinctions--Ordovician-Silurian extinction occurred about 439 million years ago, then the Late Devonian extinction, the Permia...
July 19, 2016 at 04:21
Actually, I've always had a good time in Chicago, going back to the 60s when Old Town was in its hippie hay days and as recently as last fall.
July 19, 2016 at 04:13
Neither extreme position "we are always responsible for others' actions" NOR "we are responsible only for our own actions" dissolves the opposite. The...
July 17, 2016 at 19:53
In what way is this state of mind which a. sees the world run by a tyrannical, exploitative, monstrous cabal b. sees any means of resistance as morall...
July 16, 2016 at 13:03
This is all true, though we need not concern ourselves with the very far distant demise of the solar system as a life-friendly environment. The planet...
July 16, 2016 at 02:09
Self esteem is an important property of personality. After all, one can go for several months without a single pat on the back (not to mention all the...
July 14, 2016 at 21:44
I guess a new corvette would be nice, even if you can't get instant cash value out of it. There are, I hear, worse things than being forced to drive a...
July 14, 2016 at 05:20
I don't get it either.
July 14, 2016 at 02:36
That is a very big truck. A man likes a big truck. You can carry a load of shingles, bales of hay, and sundry other items. Big trucks fuck, little car...
July 13, 2016 at 14:53
How do you think gendering words began (back in the unmapped mists of long ago)? Here's a bit of a lesson on American Sign Language -- how is gender e...
July 11, 2016 at 22:03
There is perhaps not as much support for this idea as you or I might like. In many regions of the world, women perform a lot of heavy labor--construct...
July 11, 2016 at 13:36
Let's say a guy opens a little 'convenience shop' on a shoestring. The shoestring has to cover some equipment, stock, rent, etc. He might have put all...
July 11, 2016 at 03:29
The shooting in Dallas was practically an inevitability, given the heightened tension around the country. There is nothing remarkable in the shooter b...
July 10, 2016 at 16:03
After we divide states into "nothingness" and "somethingness", we can divide "somethingness" into a. good something b. bad something c. indifferent so...
July 10, 2016 at 03:22
Larpenter Avenue, the street Philandro Castile was stopped on, is an E-W thoroughfare, running from downtown Minneapolis to a large park on the east s...
July 10, 2016 at 03:16
It is difficult to maintain perspective in the FaceBook of first-person streaming of police shootings and their aftermath. Per the Washington Post... ...
July 09, 2016 at 23:02
Work not worth doing for its own sake? Gracious, what ever happened to the Protestant Work Ethic? Work itself enables and ennobles. So says Luther, et...
July 09, 2016 at 20:13
Nice idea, but... The emotive aspects of human thinking and behavior don't allow for the abolition of either "follow the leader" or "lead the followin...
July 09, 2016 at 16:48